As we stood on the dock watching the flooding tide ease gently over the lower mudflats, the shapes of the Isle of Grain industrial area were mirrored in the waters. It was not quite oily calm, but the light northerly breeze hardly ruffled the surface. Meanwhile, the sun shone brightly from a blue sky with just a few bubbly cumulus clouds. Colonel Hawker’s “butterfly weather” came to mind as I contemplated our chances of a shot or two, concluding that an empty gamebag and clean barrels were on the cards.
Busying ourselves with sorting our kit and carting it off down the old marsh road to the boat on its mud mooring, my fowling partner Robin Egerton and I kept peering out across the flats, hoping to spot a duck or two. A few black specks at the water’s
